The sun finally came, after 10 days of wind….something’s happening out on the Great Plains, and I don’t feel at ease. I feel like a pin in a bowling game: those big angry storms, bigger than anyone has ever seen, tend to break up after becoming 100 tornadoes, pieces of which I can see come right over the western Berkshire Mtns - toward me.. Like 3 years ago, a little twister killed 3 and destroyed 600 buildings just to the south….the people of Springfield had’t seen something like that since the Agawam chief of the Pocumtuc federation, burned the place in 1675.

Now right now about 20 storm chasing caravans are deployed to the Devil's Stage - that strip of the USA running from Oklahoma City south into Texas, past Waco and G.W.Bush's ranch, to Dallas. These science guys just cruise around, driving fast, heavy SUVs ...they don’t try to get into the funnel, just close enough to spit in it….their footage is really disturbing to watch…

“Twisters were once little things, a hundred feet across, but they’ve steadily grown in size. The monster that hit Oklahomo City was 2 ½ miles across, almost 4 km. The killer that hit Moore should have killed ‘a good two hundred’ but only 29 perished: another weird fact about big tornadoes – you can ride them. Yes, ride them right up, spiraling through the funnel, and then, in some cases, gently put down on the ground…"

The storm chasers I know don’t intend to enter ‘the tunnel funnel.’ They have PhDs after all. But Dr. Owen Swan said: “We approach a funnel like you approach a dangerous snake. You distract it by honing right towards it, then another hand slips around behind, and grabs it from the back of the neck.” He meditates and believes in mind over matter.

Looking at all the southern church-captive communities cowering every time they hear a weather report, one notes simply the weight of ignorance, the tragic and foolish belief by American Biblical fundamentalists, that God sides with the Israelis and the Americans, against the Muslims, Iranians and Russia, and the Africans. This belief, held by most members of the Republican party, is a certain abuse of the holy scriptures, for partisan advantage. But for what? It is harming the world.

We're not surprised that the biblical plagues and 'dust devils' keep thrashing those Southern Zones of Emptiness, for as God says in Exodus 20:7: "If you use my name to commit evil, I will subject you an especially dire punishment."       -JPM, Amherst, Massachusetts USA